A year long investigation into the role of rituals, routines and habits and ways in which products and services, through an understanding of habit formation, can become part of the consumer habit

1. Discovering your brand hook
Consumers buy on autopilot. What does
this mean for your brand?
Consumers, their habits and the BrandHook model to drive change.
April 2013

2. This presentation is about how consumers
lives are driven by habit, how they act on
autopilot and what this means for brands.

3. There are four things to take out of this presentation:
Our behaviour is ritualistic

4. Your consumers buy on habit

5. Consumer immersion = wisdom

6. A new framework for brand building

7. Let‟s start with daily rituals. 70% of us agree
that we have morning rituals. 63% of men
have a morning ritual and 43% agree they
have a routine when it comes to toiletries.

8. 8
Discovering your
brand hook
8
A year of
observation
Over the course of 2012, BrandHook has spoken
with, observed and developed insights about a
variety of people and a lot of women in in home
sessions, accompanied shops, online communities
and innovation sessions.
• We observed a number of routines & habits from tea
drinking, dieting, grocery shopping, clothes shopping
and many more.
• We heard about the impact that kids have on rituals
and those that don‟t have children relax their
routines on the weekend.
• We experienced these routines as we spent time
with our tribes watching as their auto-pilot kicked in
to get jobs done.
• Conversed with 1,000 women in an online forum
across the UK, US and Australia about their habits.
• All the qualitative insights are supported by a
nationally representative study of 1005 Australians
18+.
Quantitative
Qualitative

9. There are four main parts to this keynote. The first
thing to know is that repetition is central to everyday
life. Imagine having to rethink everything every
day. Life would be too hard.

10. of consumers daily lives is driven by rituals and routines.

11. Why do we have such strong
daily patterns?
46% of people‟s behaviours are repeated almost daily and
usually in the same context. Habits and routines are
amplified by everyday demands, time pressures and
distractions.

12. BrandHook Rituals Study December 2012

13. 75% of people agreed that
routines exist to make life run
as smoothly as it can.
BrandHook Rituals Study December 2012

14. Actually our study has told
us that 68% of mothers felt
their life was in fact in
control.
BrandHook Rituals Study December 2012

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Discovering your
brand hook
15
Mothers are
the most
ritualistic
with 62%
creating
routines in
life.
Mornings
75%
TV Programs
74%
Meal Times
71%
Work
70%
Finances
68%
Supermarket
Shopping
66%
Radio
65%
Cooking
63%
Cleaning
60%
Tidying
59%
Driving
58%
Internet
57%

16. We actively create routines so we can move to autopilot.
A part of the brain, the basal ganglia, is responsible for “chunking”
series of activities into the brain‟s procedural memory, so we can
carry out an action or series of actions without thinking about it.
When we are in a habit, we are in an unconscious state.

17. Bob Cooper, the survival expert, sells survival kits that
include a tea bag. Making a cup of tea puts people on
autopilot and stops them thinking - which saves them from
panicking and reacting badly.

18. The Power of Habit, by
Charles Duhigg, talks about
how habits are made up of
Cue – Routine – Reward
To change or reinforce
habits, they can either be
disrupted or strengthened
by changing the cues or
triggers.

19. Discovering your
brand hook
The Habit
Loop
Cue
RewardRoutine
Cue
Routine
The critical elements to PROMOTE in habit
FORMATION or STRENGTHENING
The critical elements to DISRUPT in habit
BREAKING

20. Not only do we form habits to help us
save time, make our lives easier ...
we also think that these habits &
routines are better than any possible
alternative.

21. This video illustrates how a habit (taking the escalator)
can be disrupted by changing the cue (making the stairs
more fun).

22. Introducing a cue, such as the “out of date” stamp on
Tontine pillows, forms a habit of replacing old pillows.
Tontine‟s market share has increased 20% year on year
since this cue‟s introduction in 2010

23. Febreze was originally targeted at smokers and pet owners – but
as they could not smell their own odours, there was limited
reward and no repeat purchase or habit formation. The trial
bombed. Watching the immersion sessions helped the marketers
identify a new reward (a final touch when cleaning a room
changed Febreze‟s fortunes.

24. Buying Apple products is a habit for many. Originally, the reward was
thinking creatively. Now, we just need the cue of knowing there is a new
Apple product to buy and the routine of buying it kicks in.
Apple may have disrupted this habit by changing the charging cord on the
iPhone 5, so people are awakened back to consciousness and may
reconsider their purchase.

25. Consumers‟ buying habits, especially for mundane products like soap and
trash bags, are habitual and involve no complex decision making – making
it hard for marketers to change behaviour.
However, when going through a life event, such as moving house, getting
married or having a child, shopping habits become more flexible and open
to intervention from marketers.

26. Rituals vary as a result of life stage. Younger people may relax
their routines on weekends. Mothers embrace rituals the most.
Both men and women are at the height of habit formation
between the ages of 45-54.

27. Even longer-term decisions tend to be routine for us – as seen in
the 2008 and 2012 US election results.

28. Repetition is key for brand success. Repetition strengthens the
habits we have with a particular brand.

29. 29
Discovering your
brand hook
Repetition is
key for brand
success
⑊ Repeated behaviours relating to
purchases and consumption are linked with
an increase in market share, customer
lifetime value and share of wallet
(Ehrenberg & Goodhardt, 2002; Wirtz,
Mattila &Lwin 2007).

30. The old model of marketing is
redundant
When consumers are in a habit with a brand, they believe their
choice is the best available choice; they do not pay attention to
what other brands have to offer.

31. 31
Discovering your
brand hook
31
The journey to habit formation and
brand craving
Category
Measurement
(Quantitative)
Immersion
Sessions
(Qualitative)
The
BrandHook
Habit Model™
(Quantitative)
This is where we measure the
strength of the category and how your
brands compare to competitors. We
segment customers on the basis of
where they fit in our habit model and
identify the opportunities to grow the
market share by either reinforcing the
reward or disrupting a habit.
To truly understand the cues, triggers
and the rewards relating to each
brand within each category, we need
to be in the environment of the
customers. Immersion sessions will
bring these insights and provide the
consumer wisdom to drive the desired
behaviours.
We feed the consumer insight back
into the BrandHook model and
quantify the actions each brand and
Brand Manager need to focus on in
order to drive brand change.

32. The BrandHook Habit Model
Some categories are more habitual than others. For example,
supermarket shopping is a highly habitual activity.

33. The BrandHook Habit Model
• Some categories are
more habitual than
others.
• For example,
supermarket
shopping is a highly
habitual activity.

34. The BrandHook Habit Model
• We can then break the
consumers into four
quadrants which helps
identify the business
focus
• Do the brand leaders
concentrate on
disrupting a competitive
habit or strengthen its
on habit?

35. The BrandHook Habit Model
• We can then break the habit
model down by brand to see
where the differences exist and
what nuances each brand holds.

36. • Consumer immersion or
ethnography is the key when
trying to understand habit
formation.
• By spending time in our
people‟s lives watching, and
being involved in their world
changes the conversation.
• As Hy says, „Moving from
focus groups to ethnography
is like going from black and
white to colour‟.

37. The final stage is to drill into each segment and
identifying where the opportunities exist to impact
change.
This is where we identify the demographic,
attitudinal and psychographic information that sit
within each segment and look for the best tribes
to focus efforts on.
For example, the 5% of ALDI customers that
could be targeted to strengthen their relationship
actually don‟t represent the greatest opportunity
for ALDI. Their spend is low and they are the
customers that are travelling far to get the one or
two bargains at ALDI infrequently.
Current Woolworths and especially Coles
customers in a habit represent the real
opportunity. What they value in their supermarket
experience, what they are looking for whilst in
store and where they live – represent a far greater
opportunity for ALDI
Example BrandHook Habit Model™
Measurement

38. Dr. David Neal, a psychologist
specialising in consumer habits said:
“This study is a powerful reminder that
consumers are much less consciously
engaged in many product purchase
decisions than we typically assume.
When brands and marketers ignore the
role of ritual, they often miss the boat in
terms of influencing actual behaviour.”

39. 1. How habitual is category and your consumers?
2. Where is your money best spent: strengthening or
disrupting?
3. What are the triggers or rewards that will drive that
habit?

40. Discovering your brand hook
Contact
BrandHook
Level 4, 409 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, 3004
Phone: +61 3 9077 7887
www.brandhook.com